


A Tourist in the Waking World, Never Quite Awake

by Erushi



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: AU prompt, Alternate Universe - Inception Fusion, Alternative Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Day Five, Extractor Victor, Forger Yuuri, Forging (Inception), Inception Crossover, M/M, Mutual Pining, Victuuri Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 13:28:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9659420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erushi/pseuds/Erushi
Summary: “Please,” says Chris, just as Yuuri’s thumb drifts to end the call. “We need a forger.”“Plenty of good forgers out there,” he points out. “I hear that Eames is in Mombasa.”There’s a sigh on the other end of the line. “We don’t just need any forger. We need someone with your skillset.”---Or: The crossover/fusion with "Inception", in which Victor and Yuuri are on the same extraction team and share a Complicated History.





	

**Author's Note:**

>   
> _Seems that I have been held, in some dreaming state_  
>  _A tourist in the waking world, never quite awake_  
>  \- "Blinding", Florence + The Machines
> 
> \---
> 
> Quick "Inception" primer in the end-notes for those unfamiliar with the movie. 

He receives the call in the middle of November.

“We’ve a job for you,” Chris says, his voice tinny over the crackle of a long-distance call.

“We?” Yuuri asks, even though he already knows.

“Still working with Victor,” Chris confirms.

“Then my answer’s no,” he replies. He ignores the familiar clenching of his gut.

“Please,” says Chris, just as Yuuri’s thumb drifts to end the call. “We need a forger.”

“Plenty of good forgers out there,” he points out. “I hear that Eames is in Mombasa.”

There’s a sigh on the other end of the line. “We don’t just need any forger. We need someone with your skillset.”

=-=-=

In the end, Yuuri goes.

He tells himself that it’s because he still owes Chris one from that time in Sochi, when Chris had pulled him out of the fire, quite literally. He tells himself it’s not because when Chris works point on a job, Victor is almost always the extractor.

He’s still telling himself this as he boards his flight to Quebec, and certainly even as sidles to his seat with a smile and a murmured _excusez-moi, madame_ to the lady beside him. He sleeps poorly on the journey.

At the airport, he hails a taxi to the address which Chris had given him. The driver takes him to a squat block of apartments that’s just a couple of streets away from the Chinatown district. Yuuri tips the driver, hefts his single luggage in his hand, and takes the stairs to their base of operations of this project. At the green door with a brass “5”, he checks that his Glock is within easy reach, then rings the doorbell.

There’s a scramble of footsteps. The door flings open, and Yuuri can’t help the broad grin that cracks across his face. “Phichit!”

“Yuuri!” Phichit all but drags across the threshold as he hauls him into a tight hug.

“Look at you,” Yuuri exclaims when they finally part. “You look amazing.”

“Much better than in Detroit?” Phichit laughs. Detroit had been a tricky affair: a client who had not been entirely square with them, and a mark who did not take kindly to the notion of thieves slipping into his dreams, which in turn had required a speedy exit.

“Not exactly difficult to beat,” Yuuri agrees with rueful grin. He still has the scar on his thigh from jumping out of the window to elude the mark’s security team.

“Come meet our architect,” Phichit urges, taking Yuuri’s luggage in one hand and tugging Yuuri deeper into the small-ish apartment with the other. “Chris and Victor have gone out to get us lunch, but Leo’s just arrived too.”

Leo de la Iglesia is young, but his eyes are surprisingly soulful for his age. He greets Yuuri with a firm handshake.

“I’ve heard of your work before,” Yuuri offers. “That was a good job you did in Beijing.”

“Thanks.” Leo’s smile is self-deprecating. “It’s all pretty new to me still. I’m no Ariadne, I guess,” he says, referring to Dom Cobb’s protégé, the new enfant terrible of architecture in dream-share, “but I like to think I get by.”

“We all have to start somewhere,” Yuuri replies with an encouraging smile of his own. “If what I’m hearing is true, your first job went far smoother than mine.”

“Yuuri’s being humble now,” Phichit cuts in with a laugh. He throws his arm around Yuuri’s shoulders. “Have you found a place yet? We could split a room at a hotel. Leo’s bunking with a some college friends who are on exchange here.”

There’s a cough behind them before Yuuri can reply.

“I see we’ve all met each other,” Chris announces when they all spin around. He’s holding a pair of large paper bags – Chinese takeout, by the steamy scent that wafts through the room with his arrival – and he’s smiles broadly as he sets the food down on the counter-top of the kitchenette. “Yuuri, it’s good of you to come.”

“Chris.” Yuuri embraces him. Chris has always been kind to him, even after London, when things between Yuuri and Victor became strained.

Victor, who is standing behind Chris. His eyes are flinty when Yuuri catches his gaze accidentally, but his face is expressionless.

“Victor,” Yuuri stammers as he steps away back from the embrace, and falters. Nervously, he tucks his hands into his coat pockets.

“Yuuri.” Victor nods. His voice is flat. The silence stretches between them, a stiff and awkward thing, until Victor breaks the moment with a curt jerk of his shoulders, shrugging his coat off and dropping it carelessly on the back of an over-stuffed armchair.

Next to him, Chris clears his throat again. “Right,” he says lightly. “Well. Now that we have our forger and our food, let’s get started.”

Over sesame chicken and chow mein, Chris tells them about their employer. Emerson Yang is a successful businessman and a pillar of the Quebecois Chinese community. (“This, here, is his property,” Chris breaks off to gesture at their surroundings with a broad sweep of his chopsticks.) Everything about his life right now is perfect, save for the fact that his only daughter, Isabella, is set on marrying a young man by the name of Jean-Jacques LeRoy. The respectable Mr Yang wishes to know whether Mr LeRoy’s intentions towards his daughter are noble.

“Asian fathers,” Phichit remarks with a laugh. He catches Yuuri’s eye, and Yuuri grins in shared commiseration and comradery.

“Heaven forbid he just speaks to his daughter about his _feelings_ ,” he adds, causing Phichit to chortle.

“Yes, heaven forbid,” interjects Victor. He’s smiling, too, but the set of his mouth is stiff. He does not look at all in Yuuri’s direction. Eventually, Yuuri forces himself to look away.

=-=-=

_then._

Their first job together is a disaster. It’s some months yet before Victor will meet Chris, and in the meanwhile, no one in the team realises that their mark’s sub-conscious has militarised until they are two dreams under and it is too late.

It is only Yuuri’s second year on the field. None of his previous jobs has prepared him for a clusterfuck of this scale yet. He feels his control slipping with every forge, the guise flickering.

The last few minutes of the dream are gunfire and rain. Yuuri huddles under the scant shelter of a zinc overhang, trading potshots with an army of projections on the roof of a nearby building. The projections are better armed than he is, and he’s not exactly optimistic about his chances of survival in this dream, but he needs to keep them distracted, at least and until their extractor comes away with the goods.

“Got it,” Victor murmurs behind him, and Yuuri jumps.

Victor grabs the back of his collar, pulling him in, and away from the bullets that scour a line across the wall where Yuuri had been standing a mere moment before.

“Took you long enough,” Yuuri blurts. Belatedly, he realises what he’s said, and stammers frantically. “No, no, no, I mean – ”

He’s not expecting Victor to cut him off with a kiss. Victor’s lips are the only warm thing in the thunderstorm that rages through the mark’s dream.

“Time to go,” Victor says, and shoots himself back to wakefulness. It’s a while before Yuuri remembers to follow.

=-=-=

On paper, it’s a simple job. They’ve two weeks at the outset to crack into LeRoy’s sub-conscious, three weeks before Mr Yang is likely to start demanding results. Victor and Chris already have some ideas, and the team falls into routine as they begin to plan.

Phichit sets up his bench in the corner of the living room of the apartment that’s closest to the heater, his glass beakers and test-tubes lined up in their racks in neat, gleaming rows. He mixes his chemicals carefully, customises compounds to fulfil the specific dreaming needs of the job, and tests his blends on the rest of the team.

Leo sets up his drafting table on the other side of the living room, by the large, bay windows where there is as much sunlight as there ever will be in a Canadian winter. He sketches layouts, painstakingly builds scaled three-dimensional models with cardboard and glue, and takes Victor and Chris through the mazes he designs.

Chris is often out, doing whatever it is a pointman does to ensure that a job will run smoothly. When he is in, however, he commandeers the single bedroom of the apartment as his office. Victor joins him on occasion. Papers pile up.  

Yuuri does not care what Victor does.

(He tells himself this every morning, as he dresses on his side of the cheap hotel room which he shares with Phichit. He tries to ignore the fact that it’s a lie.)

Nominally, he has a workstation in the apartment too. In reality, it’s a flimsy card table and a foldable that he’s set up kitty-corner to Phichit’s chemical bench, with a full-body mirror just beside it. Rather, Yuuri spends a good portion of his time outside, tailing Isabella. He observes her speech and mannerisms, and practises them in front of the mirror. He spends a whole afternoon just walking around the apartment in heels, flitting between Phichit’s and Leo’s work-stations and, when Chris returns from tailing LeRoy, agrees to go with Chris to pick up dinner – all the better to mimic her walk.

Victor does not speak with him beyond what is strictly necessary for the job. Yuuri gladly repays the favour.

He still isn’t quite sure what to make of the mug of green tea on his table, still hot despite the frost outside, when he checks in at the apartment on the third morning, and on the fourth, and the fifth.

He’s late on the sixth morning as he stumbles into the apartment, bleary from a long, late night of following Isabella and LeRoy as they club-hopped their way down rue St. Laurent and on to rue Ste-Catherine. Upon his entrance, four heads look up from around Leo’s latest model, all with varying degrees of amusement on their features.

Yuuri grunts a greeting as he collapses into his chair, pawing his scarf away from where he had wrapped it around his nose and mouth against the wind, and blindly fumbling for the seemingly daily mug of green tea on his desk. The drink is still gratifyingly warm, and he gulps it down unthinkingly, heedless of his team while the rest look on.

“There’s a bed in the room,” Chris offers when Yuuri finally sets the mug down. “Why don’t you grab a nap there?” He sounds amused.

Yuuri stands again, wobbling on his feet until he grabs the back of his chair for support. He remains as he is until the room stops spinning. Then, he pushes away and trudges towards the bedroom, mutely raising his arm in acknowledgment. The bed is soft, its pillows welcoming. Yuuri sheds his coat, and only just remembers to toe of his shoes, before he collapses on top of the covers.

When he finally wakes, he discovers that he’s been tucked in, the duvet pulled to his chin. It’s a while before he also realises that he’s not alone. Yuuri blinks at the sight Victor, curled in an armchair that’s been dragged from the living room and positioned at the foot of the bed. He’s reading from a binder file, and only looks up when Yuuri unknowingly lets out a soft sound of surprise. Then, he stands abruptly, and leaves the room with the file tucked under his arm.

For a moment, Yuuri wonders if he is, in fact, still dreaming, nevermind that he hasn’t been able to dream without being hooked up to a PASIV device for more than a year now. He digs his totem out of his pocket. The weighted die rolls a three with every try, reality after all.

Yuuri isn’t quite sure what to make of that either.

=-=-=

_then._

Their second job together is not quite as disastrous as the first. In fact, Yuuri will even venture so far as to term it a success, if one discounts the fact that the team has to split and flee immediately after the job is done.

He finds himself beside Victor at the Gare du Nord, each of them waiting for their respective trains to take them out of Paris: Victor to London, Yuuri to Brussels.

 _See you around_ , he wants to say. Instead, he asks, “Why did you kiss me?”

Victor turns around to regard him, brow arched with amusement. Yuuri feels his cheeks burn. “You don’t have to answer it,” he stammers. “I mean, I was just wondering – ”

For the second time in as many jobs, Victor cuts him off again with a kiss.

“I kissed you then,” he says as he pulls back, the corner of his lips curling up in a mischievous smirk, “because I didn’t want you to think that working with me will always be so awful. And I’m kissing you now,” he adds, swooping in to steal another peck, “because you’re cute, and I hope to work with you again.”

“Do you sexually harass all your team mates?” Yuuri asks, mock-seriously. He thinks it is a valid question. Victor’s Nikiforov’s reputation as an extractor is only preceded by his reputation as a ladies’ man. Or a men’s man, if the right man is willing.

“Only the ones I like,” Victor winks, just as the speakers crackle to life: will the passengers for the London nine-o’clock please proceed to platform thirteen. “Guess that’s my train. I hope to see you around, Yuu-ri,” he waves, drawling Yuuri’s name out at the end. His final, parting kiss is anything but chaste.

=-=-=

(The cold prick of a needle to his vein. The hiss of the PASIV as Phichit presses the trigger button. The rush of sleeping compounds into his blood. Yuuri feels his eyelids flutter shut, the weight of inevitability dragging them down.)

They’re in Leo’s dream.

It’s their first test run. Leo has modelled this particular dream after the giant, outdoor ice-skating rink at Bonsecours Basin. It’s where the first level of the dream will be set, Victor tells them as they wander along the edges of the ice.

“He will meet Isabella here – ” Victor says, and Yuuri takes it as his cue to reach within himself, and to _pull_.

“– and I’ll bring up the subject of marriage and our future,” he finishes – only, it’s not his voice which speaks, but Isabella Yang’s.

“Perfect, Yuuri,” Victor smiles. His praise fills Yuuri with unbidden warmth, and Yuuri is suddenly, foolishly pleased that, for all the uncertainty dogging their personal interaction, his professional relationship with Victor is still working just fine.

From the corner of his eye, he catches Chris hiding a small smile of his own. Leo is openly gaping.

“Haven’t seen a forger in action before?” Isabella asks teasingly.

Leo snaps his mouth shut, shaking his head. “My previous jobs didn’t need one.”

Victor clears his throat. “As I was saying,” he carries on, mock-glare lacking heat, “Yuuri, as Isabella, will suggest the necessary concepts in his conscious mind. Then, in the next level, LeRoy’s sub-conscious will feed the concepts back to him.”

Chris stretches. “On the next level,” he cuts in smoothly, “Victor will intercept LeRoy at the club where his band usually plays at. He will take LeRoy to the backroom where we have put the safe. Victor will convince LeRoy to open the safe, and _voilà_.” He spreads his hands with an easy shrug.

“Question,” interjects Leo, raising a hand. Chris nods at him indulgently. “If I’m dreaming the first level, who will be dreaming the second?”

“I will,” Yuuri replies, letting Isabella go. “After the first level, LeRoy’s own subconscious impression of Isabella should take over, leaving me free to play second-point to Chris’ first. Or to take any other identity that may be suddenly be required of me,” he adds as an afterthought. “That’s one of the benefits of having a forger around.”

They go over the plan twice more in greater detail, until Victor proclaims himself satisfied. There’s still some time on the clock, and so they watch idly whiles Leo raises fantastical structures in the distance for practice, dream architecture spiralling to the iron-cast winter sky.

On impulse, Yuuri slips Isabella on again. He figures he could always do with the extra practice, too.

He doesn’t realise that Victor has stepped up behind him until Victor places a hand on his shoulder, and Isabella jumps.

“How does she feel?” Victor asks quietly. He is close enough that Yuuri can feel his breath ghost over the shell of Isabella’s ear. It makes both him and her shiver.

“Happy, mostly. Optimistic. She dislikes her father’s meddling, but accepts its inevitability. She’s content.” He shakes her off once more, and it’s just him again, him and Victor. This close, the urge to lean into Victor’s warmth is almost crippling. “I think she genuinely loves the boy.”

Victor hums absently. “That presumes that she knows all about love. And that you do, too.”

It’s the first time since he’s arrived in Montreal that Victor has said anything to him that’s not essential to the job. For a moment, Yuuri flounders. “What – ” he settles on eventually, but an aria in Italian starts to play overhead, their cue that the dream is coming to a close, _Sento una voce che piange lontano_. Yuuri shuts his eyes as the swell of the music carries him to wakefulness.

He does not speak with Victor after they awake, drawn instead into a discussion with Phichit about whether Phichit’s new compound had made the latest dream sharper than the previous one. By the time Phichit is satisfied with his answers, it was almost seven in the evening. Yuuri bites back a light curse as he hastily shrugs on his coat and wraps his scar hurriedly around his neck.

He’s not expecting Victor to stop him at the door.

“Going somewhere?” Victor asks, a brow raised just so. It’s enough to stop Yuuri short.

“Bonsecours Basin, actually,” Yuuri admits with a rueful laugh. He deliberately avoids meeting Victor’s eyes. “The rink closes in a couple of hours. I need to practise her skating if I am to forge her convincingly on the first level. Now if you would excuse me –”

“Wait here.”  Victor claps his hand briefly on Yuuri’s shoulder as he brushes past Yuuri, heading back into the apartment proper.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m coming with you,” Victor announces as he emerges from the bedroom with his coat draped over his elbow.

They walk to the Old Port district in silence, Victor seemingly disinclined to speak, Yuuri too flustered to. At the rink, Yuuri all but runs to the ice skate rental booth, then jams the ice skating boots on his feet, fingers fumbling as he laces them up as quickly as he can. He’s still not fast enough, however, and Victor trails close at his heels as he makes for the ice.

All the same, there’s still something calming about actually being on the ice, childhood memories of ice-skating in his hometown of Hasetsu, in the old Ice Palace. Yuuri almost manages to ignore Victor as Victor glides alongside him at his elbow. He warms up with a couple of laps around the perimeter rink, then breaks away, heading for the middle of the rink. He practises Isabella’s step, her tendency to let her weight drag on the left heel, and transitions into a basic stork spin, Isabella’s favourite when she skates, as far as he can tell. Gradually, his spins grow faster, his leaps wider, and he’s dimly aware that he’s no longer skating as Isabella Yang but Katsuki Yuuri, carving his peace into the ice one glide at a time.

An arm curves over the small of his back. He starts.

“Yuuri, the rink will be closing soon.” Victor’s voice is gentle. His hand closes lightly on Yuuri’s hip as he tries to steer Yuuri back towards the edge of the rink.

Instead, Yuuri lets the force of the tug carry him forward and around, catching himself against Victor’s chest. Unthinkingly, he let’s his head tip back. This close, Victor’s lips are berry red, delicate skin chapped from the cold, and Yuuri can no more resist the momentum that spirals them together in a pair spin as he can resist the urge to surge up and press his mouth against Victor’s.

Victor’s lips part as he makes tiny sound of surprise, and Yuuri licks in. Victor still tastes of the coffee he had drunk the late afternoon, sugary sweet and milky, and Yuuri hums absently with pleasure as he pulls back to nibble at Victor’s lower lip. When he chances a glance up through his lashes, Victor’s eyes are wide, his pupils dilated. Victor’s other hand comes up to cradle the back of Yuuri’s skull, and Yuuri allows himself to be pulled up into another kiss.

Overhead, the announcement blares over the fast-emptying rink, five minutes until the rink closes for the day, and will all remaining skaters please return their rented ice skates.

They break apart, and Yuuri stares at Victor, breathing hard. Realisation is acid in his stomach, his heart heavy, his limbs numb.

“Fuck,” he curses shakily, and pivots, ignoring the startled _Yuuri?_ that Victor calls in his wake as he skates away. He leaves the rink without waiting for Victor.

=-=-=

_then._

Their third job together is a rousing triumph.

They celebrate afterwards in Victor’s room, just the two of them and four bottles of champagne.

To be honest, Yuuri doesn’t remember much of that night. What he _does_ remember is waking up the next morning in Victor’s bed, naked. Victor snuffles into the pillow next to his, in a similar state of undress. Bite marks and bruises pepper his body, clustering around his hipbones and between his thighs.

He _thinks_ he may have left those scratches down Victor’s back.

Mostly, he remembers the sheer, utter panic of waiting up in _Victor Nikiforov’s bed_ , because everyone who’s anyone in dream-share knows that that’s a one-way ticket to getting your heart broken.

So he gathers his things, and slips out of the room before Victor wakes.

Six months later, and Victor still hasn’t texted or called. Yuuri ignores the hollowness in his chest, and congratulates himself on leaving when he did.

He does meet with Chris, who has joined up with Victor by then but who has been Yuuri’s friend for almost as long. Chris calls him a number of unpleasant names for leaving that fateful morning, but he also plies Yuuri with beer and sympathy while Yuuri spills out his point of view in a weepy, drunken mess. All in all, Yuuri still counts it as a win.

=-=-=

Neither of them mentions the kiss at the rink. Instead, they fall back into their uneasy orbits around each other. On his part, Yuuri makes it a point to never be in the same room as Victor except when necessary for the job.

It’s awkward. It’s uncomfortable. It’s even inconvenient at times, such as the time he’s forced to abandon his lunch, half-eaten, at the kitchenette when Victor begins laying out _his_ lunch on the kitchenette counter too. He thinks both Chris and Phichit suspect that something up.

Yuuri tells himself that it’s for the best.

(He ignores the mug of green tea that still appears on his table every morning.)

Phichit tries to approach him about it just once. Yuuri cuts him off immediately.  

“Sorry,” he apologises, as Phichit flops down beside him on the sofa with a dramatic sigh. “I just don’t think I can talk about it right now.”

“Don’t you think that you’re worrying too much?”

“I’m know I’m not,” Yuuri retorts sharply. “He’s Victor. I’m just… me.” He drops his gaze to his lap, before snapping his head once more with a glare. “Anyway, what happened to not wanting to talk about it?”

Phichit holds his hands up in a placating gesture. “I’m only asking,” he says, “because I need a favour.”

“A favour?”

“There’s a new compound I want to test. It’s supposed to help dreamers find each other more easily in a dream. I’m thinking I should start with dreamers who know each other well.”

Yuuri crosses his arms. “So ask Victor and Chris.”

“I did. Victor has agreed. Chris isn’t available. He’s meeting our client today.”

“Have you tried Leo?” asks Yuuri desperately, not liking the apparent direction of the conversation.

“Leo’s unavailable too,” Phichit confirms, to Yuuri’s dismay. “Something about his friends throwing a house party today.” His expression is beseeching.

And that’s how Yuuri finds himself wandering in Victor’s dream.

It’s not a bad dream to be in, he decides. Its atmosphere is serene, and Victor’s projections are so far quiet, polite. Something tugs at his senses, a compulsive urge he can’t quite put his finger on. He lets sensation guide his feet, down street after street of generic city scape, New York City interchangeable with Shanghai with Berlin.

He rounds a corner, and another city yawns open before him. It’s different, this time. The air is soft, redolent of a long-ago memory that’s now grown dim, and the buildings and monuments are worn about the edges, over-exposed, like a cherished, old photograph that’s been taken out one time too many.

St. Petersburg, Yuuri realises belatedly. Russia. Victor’s home town.

His feet carry him to the bank of a vast and swollen river, and across a bridge which Yuuri only recognises from photographs as the Tuchkov.

The tugging sensation is stronger on the other bank. Yuuri can only assume it means that his closer. He follows to pull down a side-street, to a café, where he finally catches a glimpse of Victor’s pale hair, glinting still despite the weak sunlight of the dreamscape. He takes a step forward, and hesitates.

Victor, it appears, is not alone, but sharing a table at the café with a projection. Victor says something which makes the projection laugh, and when the projection ducks his head briefly, Yuuri finds himself staring at his own features.

He’s still staring when Victor leans over the table to kiss his projection of Yuuri, Victor’s hand coming up to cup the doppelganger’s jaw tenderly. Yuuri’s gut wrenches.

Suddenly, his doppelganger freezes. He turns slowly to look at Yuuri. All the other projections around him go still, too. Yuuri tenses. Mentally, he begins to calculate the furthest he might be able to run the projections tear him apart. It’s unfortunate, he thinks, that mazes have been never been his strongest suit.

In the café, Victor finally seems to have realised that there is something wrong. He looks up too, following the line of the doppelganger’s gaze. “Yuuri!”

Victor lunges out of his seat. At the same time, all the projections begin to converge on Yuuri. The air before Yuuri shimmers, and an iron-wrought staircase appears, spiralling into the sky.

Without hesitation, Yuuri bounds up the first few steps. Instantly, the staircase lifts, carrying Yuuri up above the heads of the angry projections, and towards a platform in the air. Towards Victor.

“Yuuri,” Victor says, when Yuuri steps off the stairs and onto the platform too. He looks stricken. “Yuuri, how much did you see?”

“I saw enough.” He avoids Victor’s eyes, looking over the edge of the platform instead. On the ground, the projections are shouting and gesturing at the platform, angry at being deprived of their target. His gaze skitters across the face of his doppelganger, of Victor’s projection of _him_ , his own features twisted in a feral snarl. His gorge rises.

Gradually, Yuuri becomes aware of Victor’s hands on his shoulders, steadying him. One of the hands drifts towards his chin, gently tipping his head up.

“Yuuri,” he repeats, and seems to falter.

“What was that?” Yuuri bursts out.

Victor flinches, then squares his shoulders. “You know what it was.”

Involuntarily, Yuuri sucks in a breath, a sharp inhale. “You know what, we’re not talking about this in your dream, of all places,” he bites out. He dreams a gun in his hands, and shoots himself through his mouth.

He wakes with a jolt, frantically ripping the IV from his arm as he sits up.

“Yuuri, did something happen?” Phichit looks up from his clipboard, clearly startled. “There’s still another minute on the clock.”

Yuuri ignores him, heading for the bathroom instead, where he slams the door shut and viciously wrenches the tap. Cold water gushes out. He splashes his face with the water until the front of shirt is soaked, then digs his totem out once more. His hands tremble as he throws the weighted die on the tiny, faux marble counter of the sink: three, thee, three, three. Yuuri snatches the die up again, stuffing it back into his pocket before he leans his back against the cool tile of the bathroom wall.

The door opens. Victor slips in wordlessly, closing the door again behind him. He reaches over to turn the tap, and the sound of running water cuts off abruptly. Suddenly, silence fills the bathroom, heavy and suffocating.

In the silence, Victor crosses his arms. “Are you running away again?”

For a while, Yuuri busies himself with studying the remaining splashes of water on the counter. When it becomes clear that Victor is waiting for a reply, he mutters, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You run away.” A derisive snort. “You always run away.”

“I do not run away.”

“Then stop pushing me away!” Victor snaps. His arm lashes out, hand snagging on Yuuri’s elbow as he pulls Yuuri towards him. His other hand grips Yuuri’s chin, forcing Yuuri to meet his gaze. His eyes are hard, but eventually, they soften.

Yuuri’s shoulders sag. “I can’t help it,” he whispers in defeat, his eyelids drifting shut. “You’re Victor.”

“What on earth are you on about?”

“You’re Victor Nikiforov.” Yuuri brings his arm up, knocking Victor’s hand away. His head bows. “You’re the best extractor in the field. You have everything. I’m just me.” He laughs shakily. “Plain, old me. One day, when you look at me, you’ll see me for who I am, and you’ll tire of me.”

“Yuuri, is that what you think?” Victor’s voice is strained.

Yuuri lifts his head again, opening his eyes. “I’ve always looked up to you,” he says, the words finally spilling out. “When I ignore you, it’s because I don’t want you to see my shortcomings.”

Silence once more. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Yuuri says, reaching for the door handle and pulling the door ajar. “I’ll let Phichit know that his compound works.”

He’s not expecting the fist which slams the door shut from behind him. He spins around again, startled.

“And who’s to say you won’t tire of me first?” Victor snarls. He’s angry, the angriest that Yuuri has seen him yet.

“Huh?”

“I’m older than you. Hell, I think I may start balding any day from now.” Victor edges forward, crowding Yuuri backwards against the door. “There plenty of new extractors getting into dream-share these days, all of the younger than me, all of them hungry to make their mark.”

Victor pauses. He reaches up to card his fingers through Yuuri’s hair. His touch is gentle. “And you, Yuuri,” he murmurs, burying his face in the crook of Yuuri’s neck. “You’re amazing. You’re a forger in a game where there are few enough forgers as it is. You’re in demand. I think the odds of you tiring of me first are pretty even, don’t you think?”

“Victor,” Yuuri breathes. Carefully, he reaches up and rests a hand on the back of Victor’s neck, stroking the soft hairs.

“I can’t promise you a happily ever after,” Victor whispers into his skin, “but I can promise that I will try, if only you will, too.”

“Shut up,” Yuuri says, and when Victor finally looks up again, he seals his answer against Victor’s lips.

=-=-=

_now._

LeRoy opens the safe, and there’s a blue velvet box inside, a sparkling ring and a note, _Isabella, this Friday_. By all accounts, their fourth job together is a definite success.

Yuuri’s not thinking about the job, however. Not while he’s braced on his arms and knees on Victor’s mattress, while Victor pushes in slowly, so slowly. Yuuri cries out and arches into every thrust, while Victor presses a hot trail of kisses down the length of his spine. Hands stroke, palms cup and fingers tease, round one bleeding into two and even three.

Later, they lie in a tangle of sheets. When he’s finally caught his breath, Yuuri sits up, swings his legs over the side of the bed, and staggers to the bathroom. When he emerges from the bathroom, Victor has rolled onto his side. He regards Yuuri mock-solemnly as he watches Yuuri stagger back to the bed. “Going anywhere?”

Gratefully, Yuuri collapses onto the mattress again. He still doesn’t quite trust his legs yet. “I think I can afford to stay for a while,” he says, burrowing against the warmth of Victor’s chest.

“Good,” Victor says, and throws a leg over Yuuri’s thighs. They fall asleep like that, sweaty and disgusting and just perfect.

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  **"Inception" Primer**  
>   
> 
> See: Christopher Nolan's amazing film, released in 2010. Shout-out to his characters referenced in this fic:  
> \- Eames (Tom Hardy), the forger (who is indeed in Mombasa at the start of the film)  
> \- Dominic Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), the extractor  
> \- Ariadne (Ellen Page), the architect whom Dom recruits in the film 
> 
> Extraction: The breaking into someone's dreams to steal, or "extract", secrets from their sub-conscious. This is done by dream-sharing, and is generally a team effort. 
> 
> Please watch this video (4min 21s) for a quick explanation on how dream-sharing works, and what "projections" are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yshUmxuEjE
> 
> The Wikia page is also pretty useful: http://inception.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Dream_mechanics 
> 
> An extraction team typically comprises of:  
> \- An extractor, i.e. the one who does the main "stealing"  
> \- A pointman (sometimes), i.e. the one who has everyone's back  
> \- An architect, i.e. someone who creates the dream  
> \- A forger (sometimes), i.e. someone who can take the form of other people in a dream  
> \- A chemist (sometimes), i.e. someone who handles the chemicals and compounds necessary for the dream-sharing to take place
> 
> Dream-sharing is done using a PASIV device. When one dies in a dream, one wakes up. Hence the references in the story to characters shooting themselves awake etc. Otherwise, the person remains asleep and dreaming until the allocated time on the PASIV runs out.
> 
> A "totem" is an item used to test whether one is awake or still dreaming, the idea being that only the owner of the totem knows how that totem feels like or behaves. Thus, if the person were in someone else's dream, the dreamer would not be able to re-create that particular feel or behaviour of that item, therefore giving away the nature of the dream.
> 
> A sub-conscious is militarised when the dreamer has been trained to resist extraction. The projections - already hostile to foreign dreamers - become even more aggressive and strategic in their attacks. Greater firepower is usually involved too.
> 
> \---
> 
> tumblr: [erushi](http://erushi.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Feel free to drop by and say hi! :)


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